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F. Skinner’s notorious theory of behavior modification was denounced by critics 50 years ago as a fascist, manipulative vehicle for government control.
THE MENTAL MARATHON. THE MENTAL MARATHONBy Mindy Solkin Owner and Head Coach The Running Center We all know that running requires a great amount of physicality.

As a young man, Benjamin Franklin set out to improve himself by devising a chart-based log for tracking his progress against the virtues he identified as essential to good personhood. Each week, he would pick a virtue to cultivate, then put a black pencil mark in his calendar chart on any day he failed to uphold the virtue. This visual feedback on his progress encouraged him, and allowed him to move to a different virtue the following week, hoping that each week would leave him with a “habitude” for that particular virtue. We try to reverse-engineer willpower and flowchart our way to happiness, but in the end, it is habit that is at the heart of our successes and our failures. Duhigg first became fascinated by the power of habit eight years ago, while in Baghdad as a newspaper reporter.

So the major summoned Kufa’s mayor and made a strange request: Get the food vendors out of the plaza.
9 Productivity Tricks for Procrastinators. Irony: As I started to write this article, I thought, “I’ll just go play one quick Sudoku game first.”

I caught myself in the act and marched myself to my laptop. People who say that procrastination is about laziness are probably the same people who think that anorexia is about not eating enough.
30 Life-Enhancing Things You Can Do in 30 Minutes or Less. Many of us attempt to measure our happiness based on the duration of certain favorable experiences in our lives.

The longer a favorable experience lasts, the happier we think we’ll be. But the truth is, life is simply a string of small, independent moments that are always changing. Thus, a few minutes well spent here and there can make a big difference in what we get out of life in the long-term. Here are 30 things you can do in 30 minutes or less that will have a positive emotional effect on you and those closest to you. And yes, I realize some of these suggestions may lead to activities and projects that will likely take longer than 30 minutes to complete; but they still take far less than 30 minutes to start.
Nine Things Successful People Do Differently - Heidi Grant Halvorson.

Learn more about the science of success with Heidi Grant Halvorson’s HBR Single, based on this blog post.

Here’s an alternative system. (This is Part 1 in a series about My Productivity System.) A friend asked me this question about what system I use to manage my todo list: Your todo list is probably like mine, a million items long and constantly growing… Do you use a system or systems to manage your todo list?
10 Laws of Productivity. You might think that creatives as diverse as Internet entrepreneur Jack Dorsey, industrial design firm Studio 7.5, and bestselling Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami would have little in common.

In fact, the tenets that guide how they – and exceptionally productive creatives across the board – make ideas happen are incredibly similar. Here are 10 laws of productivity we’ve consistently observed among serial idea executors: 1. Break the seal of hesitation. A bias toward action is the most common trait we’ve found across the hundreds of creative professionals and entrepreneurs we’ve interviewed. 2.

When our ideas are still in our head, we tend to think big, blue sky concepts.

Advice

B-Life. Mnmlist. Clean. Ryan Gosling Reveals His Perfect Day Activity — Knitting!
Ryan Gosling may be a major film star, but his perfect day involves something entirely unglamorous — yarn and knitting needles. “I did this scene in ‘Lars and the Real Girl’ where I was in a room full of old ladies who were knitting, and it was an all-day scene, so they showed me how. It was one of the most relaxing days of my life,” Ryan told GQ Australia’s February/March 2013 issue. In fact, it wasn’t just relaxing. The box office hunk said it was perfect!